Audience
Solo, two-person, small residential building companies in New Zealand who price their own renovation, bathroom, deck, and home addition work.
About CostMate
CostMate is estimating software built for New Zealand residential builders — solo operators and two-person crews doing renovations, bathrooms, decks and additions.
Labour is calculated using phase-based production rates adjusted for real site conditions (access, height, existing-building constraints, crew size) rather than a flat square-metre rate. BRANZ wastage percentages are applied to material quantities automatically. NZ Building Code requirements — external moisture, wet areas, energy efficiency, timber framing — are built into every estimate by default, not left as a checklist.
A quote-checking step reviews the estimate and flags scope commonly missed on residential quotes before it's sent to the client.
CostMate runs on a rules engine, not a language model — every quantity, wastage figure and code item is deterministic and reproducible, and can be traced back to why it's there. It is not a quantity surveying package, project management platform, or job scheduling tool.
